TO INFORM YOU or BE INFORMED

When you write emails to your customers, do you want to be polite or impolite?  

Is that a real question?  
Well, I guess most of you want to be polite. Yet the real question is: how? 


How to be polite in your emails?




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THE QUESTION IS: BE INFORMED OR TO INFORMED YOU



If you want to know how, read the following two sentences:

1.         Please be informed that the task is complete.    

2.        This is to inform you that the task is complete.

So which one is more polite?  You probably think that the first one is more polite, right? But why? What why? I mean, if you want to improve, enhance, upgrade, or boost your Office (business) English, you have to know why, the reasons behind, right?
 


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WHY'BE INFORMED' IS MORE POLITE


So here you are, the reasons behind. Sentence 1 is in passive voice, so it is more polite. 


That’s it? Well, it could be.  But there is something more about the verb ‘inform’. ‘Inform’ is a special verb.  How special is it?

It is a Friendly Verb.  



What?  What do I mean? I mean ‘inform’ is usually followed by someone (or a friend), for example, I am writing to inform you that you have won a prize.   So the friend of ‘inform’ is ‘you’, and you can’t leave out the word ‘you’, which is why ‘inform’ is a Friendly Verb.  


(What is a Friendly Verb? A verb that wants to be with a person, or a friend all the time. So you do not write things like: I informed. I told.)





With the idea of Friendly verbs, you can see that the coming sentence is ABSOLUTELY wrong: I am writing to inform that you have won a prize.   


(Why: The you (the friend) is missing)



In other words, in the above sentence, ‘inform’ becomes a Lonely Verb, with no friends around. So the problem is solved? Well, not yet. 


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INFORM + YOU

There is a problem with ‘inform + you’.  

What problem is it? It implies something bad. How bad is it? It implies that ‘you’ is inferior, that ‘you’ has a lower status, and that the one who writes the email has more ‘power’ than ‘you’.



You don’t get it. Well, what about the following sentence?  

I told you to finish it before 6pm.  

That is, 'told + you' is impolite.

 

So if you want to be polite with ‘inform’, give it a twist.  


How are you going to twist it? Put ‘inform’ in passive voice and the sentence becomes: Please be informed that the task is complete. In other words, when you put ‘inform’ in passive voice, the word ‘you’ can be skipped.

 







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INFORM + ME

Yet, there is a situation in which you can still be polite with ‘inform + someone’. What is it? Well, the someone does not necessarily have to be ‘you’, right? In fact it can be ‘me’ or ‘us’. 


So when you ask for information and you want to be polite, you may write:



Please inform us of any change regarding the proposal (discussed yesterday).
 



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So to sum up, the Feel Good Tips are:

Inform + me / us	POLITE
Inform + you	IMPOLITE

Pic Sources:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76029035@N02/6829383079/in/photostream/?reg=1&src=comment
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dylaphant07/8191530690/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdickert/2267116583/sizes/m/in/photostream/